


Statute of Limitations

by imladrissun



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Other, no one actually dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-10-25 16:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 20,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10767822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imladrissun/pseuds/imladrissun
Summary: Peter's got it all wrong, Charles thinks.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic presupposes that Peter has a different home life than the one implied in the film--his personality comes off as very interesting, very unique and my headcanon didn't line up with the supposed Lorna we see in the earlier film. I see Peter as very isolated, in many senses, despite and perhaps contributing to his laconic, casual personality/behavior.
> 
> Also, DoFP implies Peter has been caught by the cops--I personally don't agree with the idea of a speedster getting caught for minor thefts like the ones shown [like junk food/electronics]. He's too fast for that, too fast for everything normal.

Peter trains as an X-man. Eventually, Erik returns, and Charles has to decide what to do. It's not like he hasn't accidentally overheard Ororo thinking about Peter's real father.

Peter spends a lot of time with Jean, weirdly. Eventually, he realizes that she knows about his parentage, and likes to talk with him about how much she hates her home life. ... Which is not what he expected, considering it was average and boring.

Peter's mother was a borderline emotionally abusive alcoholic. She hasn't been back to the house in years; she basically abandoned Peter. And despite it all, the boy is gentle, quiet, self-depricating. Apparently when he said he was a 'loser, living in his mother's basement', he was telling the literal truth, with a few missing yet essential facts.

And he hasn't even spoken to his real father, despite being near him several, actually many times. Charles doesn't get it; what's he waiting for? It's times like these that he wishes he could read his mind.

Jean and Peter become friends, and he spirits her away quite a bit. Jean seems to revel in that freedom, and Charles can see in her mind that they often go to the North, to the endless espanse of snow at the top of the world.

He's become as worried as her about her power. Peter calls it 'the bird', to her amusement. His casualness about it calms her. Charles wonders if that's why they go to the ice, the cold--because the bird is some kind of primordial fire, or something.

Unfortunately for everyone, and Charles feels that that mostly includes just himself, Erik never really talks to Peter on his own. Not that Peter’s engaging him, in his defense. 

Charles wants some resolution to it all, and feels like he’s the only person who’s looking out for Erik’s wellbeing as it is, anyway. He turns it over in his mind, trying to come up with the best way for him to find out—a way that will make both he and Peter happy.

It doesn’t help that Peter is a rather laconic individual, whose mind is impenetrable. Not even Jean can sense his feelings, his thoughts. Anything. 

So of course, Erik finds out in the worst way possible. Peter’s been injured, and Charles immediately turns to Erik. “Hank will be ready to get blood from you, if necessary, I’m sure,” he says absently, watching Jean clutch Peter’s arm, upset. 

Scott tries to comfort her, but he doubts she can even see him. 

The real reason they bonded was one he doesn’t know about. It’s their mutual ’terrible’ parents situation. Though Jean will freely admit that her parents have done nothing, said nothing, tried to be supportive. She just doesn’t care for them personally, other than a vague feeling of loyalty-ness or belonging [in some nebulous way]. 

While Peter doesn’t mention his own parents, he’s very supportive. At first, she just tells him things once in a while because he’s new, and then she realizes how far into the music world he is. His room is filled with notebooks of sheet music paper, and she suddenly realizes that he can run from here to LA and New York in an instant. 

And he has been. He’s been writing the songs on the top of the charts, laying out the music for the world’s most famous singers and musicians. While he’s surprised she noticed, thought about it, and extrapolated correctly, Peter is shyly proud of what he does. 

It turns out he has a lot of money, he just keeps giving it away all the time. Mostly to people who suffered house fires, or burns. Jean doesn’t ask what that means; did he get hurt, or almost get hurt, and the thought still haunts him?

She too saw echoes of Peter’s real father’s identity in some of the students’ minds, but when asked, he just shrugs. “It was like hearing it murmured out loud,” she explains, hastily. She still gets embarrassed that she can’t control her eavesdropping. 

“I’m not great with my power sometimes too,” he offers, seemingly unperturbed that she knows his quote ‘secret’. “It’s hard to listen to regular people talk in real time, so I end up tuning everyone out all the time without really thinking about it.”

Jean laughs, she can’t help it. “I kind of hate my parents,” she admits, assuming he’ll chime in with agreement about his own. 

But he doesn’t. “Hmm, the social worker at school when I was a kid said it was okay if I felt like that about what my mom did to me, but she was just like that. It was natural for her. Part of her.” Peter keeps fiddling with his current notebooks, his hand moving unnaturally fast across the page as he writes music or something in it. 

She doesn’t ask for details. Even the lightest implications are bad. 

“And how is Erik?” she says, not wanting to discomfit him with the previous topic. 

He shrugs again. “I don’t know, I’ve never really talked to him.”

“What?” Jean says, shocked. Before she can ask if he is refusing to talk to him, or just not making time for him, Peter continues. “He’s got his own thing going on. Crazy past, crazier revenge, anti-hero epic quests, a family. I’m just some random pretty much old person. It would be weird,” he concludes, as if that’s his final word on the topic. 

It’s not Jean’s. “But you deserve to have your father,” she argues, hating the idea of Peter having to be alone, with no family. She saw his records, the file Charles has on him. He had just a mother, that was it. 

“I’m good,” he demurred, to her continuing confusion. Jean couldn’t help but feel her own response made no sense. For someone who unreasonably, illogically didn’t like her own parents, she was on shaky ground, and she knew it. 

And then it happened. 

Peter had been injured, knocked out during a fight when he had been focused on delivering the last child hostage to safety, into the care of an emergency responder nurse. 

It had been a minor skirmish, but Peter had done much more, much faster than anyone else, of course. The team kept the terrorists distracted while he got all the innocent people out of danger. While he would be fine, Jean was still upset over his unconscious state. 

It was the power within her, partially. Part of it was just her, too, but the other thing wasn’t happy. When she heard the Professor mention Erik giving blood, she turned around and looked at him. She and Xavier gazed at each other for a moment, not sharing words but mental feelings. 

Didn’t Erik deserve to know too? Would they tell him if Peter died? 

Unfortunately for them, Erik noticed. “Explain,” he said quietly, turning slowly toward Charles, who hesitated for a beat too long.

Erik’s whole expression changed at that, and the two of them retreated to his office to discuss it. Well, more like one being interrogated, Jean thought. Thank god Erik loved him, or he’d be in a world of trouble. 

She and Scott left Peter with Hank, and went to clean up. As she toweled her hair, she could sense Erik’s anger at the Professor keeping the truth from him all the way across the estate. 

And he was angry. Erik had had it up to here. He stalked out of Charles’ office, startling the children in the hall, and went all the way down to where his little scientist kept his projects. One of them was a rudimentary doctoring room. It did not seem like enough in light of the present revelations. 

Few dangers could make his blood run cold, or grip him in fear, but going downstairs to stare at an unconscious boy was up there. The scientist retreated immediately; it was just him. Alone. 

With his son. 

Charles had proved it, giving him conclusive evidence; he had apparently investigated when he first heard of it. God forbid he share that he’d heard it. Erik had never been so disgusted with him. He’d been somehow given this miracle of a child who had not only lived, but had a power that made him very hard to take down, and Charles didn’t feel this was something he deserved to know?

He felt like he was almost hysterical, but in a detached way. And Charles had said Peter had known for a while now. The kid had barely even spoken with him. He’d known of him, of course. Peter taught music classes at the school, and his friends [really only Jean, Scott and Ororo] had gotten him to sit in on actual classes once in a while. 

Peter was exempt from having to ‘be’ a student, really, but had not had much education, as Erik remembered it. How ironic, and infuritating, that he was trying to recall the few vague things he’d heard about his own son. 

He hesitantly reached toward his lax hand on the bed; Peter looked like he was in a non-comfortable sleep. Nothing could be fixed, though, Erik thought, since he had already been given the painkillers just a few minutes ago. 

He just lay there, on the table, and Erik felt a surge of fury for the way his boots were still on, and his goggles, and that he had no blanket. It was unacceptable. He fixed it all, trying not to touch him as much as possible. 

It seemed like going too far, especially when mixed with one being asleep and the other knowing too much. 

The worst part was, he had dredged his memory for facts about his mother, and only remembered she had demanded to sleep together as her price for some information he needed on a man he was taking down. She had not been pleasant, and he knew it had been safe. She had said she took medicine, and he had insisted on protection regardless. 

And all for nought he thought, finally turning away from his vigil. Erik had searched his sleeping face for almost an hour now, for something, but what that was he did not know. His oddly colored hair was incongruously soft as he tried to pull his goggles off from where they rested around his neck without disturbing him or moving his head too much. 

Finally, he trudged up the stairs to his old room. Sometimes he stayed in Charles’, but he didn’t feel like seeing him at all for a while. He undressed mechanically, and laid down, staring at the ceiling, unseeing. 

That was when it hit him: had Peter chosen to not tell him because he didn’t find him acceptable? Or just up to the task?

He had literally seen him under the grip of an ancient mutant’s brainwashing, and Erik hadn’t prevented his leg being broken, which must have been horrific for someone like Peter.

The night crawled on. Erik felt crushed by the weight of how unwanted he was as a father in the darkness. 

He felt like he had barely slept, if at all, when the sun rose again. He went back down to see Peter at 5 am, only to find him awake. And clearly surprised to see him. He could relate. 

He had gotten a metaphorical concussion from the shock of it all. Erik realized, too late, that he was going to have to say something, and also explain that he knew, without directly asking if Peter thought he was such a piece of worthless garbage that he didn’t want him to know he was related.

Thankfully, Peter cut him off before he could even draw breath. “Jean told me you know,” he said, and Erik nodded dumbly. Peter tipped his head to the side a tad and back. “I didn’t want you to have to deal with something more, they told me about your real family.”

Erik stared at him, shocked, mouth open a little. “You are just as real,” he ground out, unable to let him imply he didn’t count as Erik’s real son. “She never told me,” he said aimlessly, upset, just in general. 

Peter tossed his hand in a small motion. “I don’t know where she is,” he explained, “she left a long time ago. It’s just been me.”

Erik took a minute to try not to react to that. It was hard, but he pulled through. It may have been stupid, but he didn’t want his first real moments with his only person, his only family left to be him shrieking in anger about other people. 

Peter kept talking, but he looked a little white, and too serious. Even Erik knew he was never like that. It was one of his defining characteristics, that he was always laid back, kind and funny. He stepped forward without realizing it, and despite himself, wound up hugging him while he half-sat on the bed beside him. He had awkwardly himself pressed into the hollow of his neck and shoulder. 

He was leaning over him as he lay on the bed, kind of trapping him down unknowingly, with an arm on his shoulder; his fingers could just feel his silver hair brushed the tips. He thought absently that he should say something, but couldn’t focus on rational things. He felt emotionally overwhelmed. 

It was almost more that he had someone to love, than that he wasn’t alone, that was most important. But both were good. He barely noted Peter trailing off and gently touching his arm, only to retreat. He knew it was going to be uncomfortable when the kid stopped him, but he didn’t care. He just wanted a nice moment. 

It was stressful, in a way, but also the best feeling he’d felt in a while. Even if Peter shoved him away, out of this awkward hug like embrace, he’d still gotten to have it. He hadn’t really thought about what others might think of him, though he’d been surprised that his wife hadn’t cared about his past. Then it had been simpler, she would probably recoil and leave forever. End of story.

He felt almost oddly worried about Peter’s judgment. Just his luck that the boy seemed to be the most gentle, calm person in the entire mansion. Someone more wild at heart, or even dangerous, might empathize with him; Peter might just find him alien, impulsive, murderous and a problem. 

He didn’t want to let go and find out.


	2. Chapter 2

Thankfully for everyone, Charles barges in. Erik sighs and tries not to roll his eyes, disentangling himself from his octopus-like smothering. He may have overdone it, he thinks. The soft cream colored blanket makes Peter look more like a child than he really is. 

Is it temporal, measurable age that makes you who you are, or your behavioral markers of age alone? Peter acts older than his age in temperament, but younger in innocence. 

At the entrance of the Professor, Peter startles, and looks like he’s been hit by a car, unfortunately. At the sight of Charles, he glances at Erik and frowns, just barely. Does he want to keep this a secret [?], Erik thinks. He’s not exactly anyone someone would pick if they had a choice. 

Or does he know that Charles already knows?

Oddly, Charles does not always respond well to social cues from people less forthcoming than himself. He’s an extrovert by nature. “So?” he says, wheeling himself up to them. His implication is obvious. Did they discuss their situation, his look all but screams.

“What?” Peter says, startling Erik, and the other too, from the looks of it. He tips his head a little and stares at Charles. He stares back. 

Erik looks back and forth between them, wondering how this is going to go. While he is Charles' sole romantic partner [the Professor disclosed it a few days ago, while they were still sleeping in the same room], Erik has no qualms about putting his son first. Even if he doesn’t really know him. 

Peter is not someone who takes a stand, who makes their opinion known. If he hints at it, that’s enough for Erik. 

Charles wisely coughs and changes tack. “What do you think about your class today, I could cancel it, Peter.” 

He drags himself up on the pillows, putting a hand down to sit on the side of the bed, shaking his head gently. Just a touch, and then he stops. Erik pages Hank through the phone beside him on the table. He’ll have to be cleared to leave anyway, he assumes.

“Nah, I’m good,” Peter says, “It’s just beginner music theory. It’s nothing.”

For the first time, Erik wonders what exactly Peter knows. What boy his age and education level is that accomplished in understanding the courses he teaches? He knows he does teach most instruments, from the piano to basics like the trumpet, and a course in historical music. 

He once walked down the hall where his little ‘classroom’ is, at the end of part of the building where the noise won’t bother anyone, only to hear mandolins and then what he thinks was a lyre. At the time he hadn’t given it much thought.

The idle thought of how he must play the guitar, and have one, hits him with the unwelcome realization that he has no idea what Peter even ‘has’. Does he have adequate amount of things? Was his living situation acceptable before he came to the mansion? What about money?

While he could steal anything he needed, Erik can’t see him doing it all the time. 

He and Charles have been arguing as he thinks about it, mainly on whether or not he’s up to teaching today. In the meantime, Hank’s arrived and does a few routine checks. Erik contemplates him; his color is better, he seems like he’s not in pain. 

Peter acts like he wants to go, so Erik decides to intervene. “I’ll walk him there, if he’s still fine by then, he can do it.”

Charles breaks off and looks at him, and thankfully accepts his word as law in this case. He walks Peter out, leaving Charles behind with Hank to gossip, no doubt. Peter says nothing until they’re out in the hall, after passing through a few closed doors. He walks fine, at least. It’s good luck that there’s almost no one up so early on a Friday. 

His classroom looks odd on the inside; Erik’s never been in there since it’s been his. At the end of the room are only a few windows. There are a lot of ancient looking instruments around, and posters explaining basic information about reading music, scales, and solfege. They look handmade, but the letters are traced out, as if someone used a stencil. It’s all uniform. 

Peter notices him looking, and shrugs. “Yeah, I’m dyslexic sometimes, a little,” he says quietly. "The letter things help me make it look right, like perfect.”

Erik nods. “Look,” the boy continues, playing with a violin bow; his hands blur before him. “you don’t have to do this… you have things to do. You know.”

“Euh?” he says. Erik shakes his head. “What? I don’t, I’m just here. I usually go from one thing to another. I don’t, I mean. I didn’t really have anything else to do,” he explains. Peter looked at him, surprised at that. 

He nods. “I’m at loose ends a lot,” Erik admitted. “I usually work on trying to help mutants who have no recourse. Some of them, I’ve been bringing here, to Charles.”

Peter raises an eyebrow just a tad, and he knows why. “Yes, I don’t only blow things up,” he adds, wryly. “Not what you expected?”

“I don’t know,” Peter says charitably. “I didn’t really think about it. You’re like a movie main character, no offense,” he adds. Erik tries to smother a laugh. “I’m an average guy. I don’t even read the newspaper; you’re in it.”

“It’s better that way,” Erik demurs. He feels seized by the desire to keep Peter out of it, all of it, but it’s better that he be an X-Man, with a team, than work on Erik’s side. His is much more illegal, bloody, and terrifying. “You’re contributing here.”

Peter almost laughs, but with no humor. “You can learn music from a video. I tried to do something good once, and it didn’t work, I—“ But a kid comes into a room, a younger one with a little instrument case. 

He breaks off when he sees them, and straightens up. Peter is actually a good teacher, when it comes down to it. Erik walks out, and listens for a second outside in the hall. Not to be creepy, but just because he’s only heard him speak [in terms of him actually listening to it] a few times before.


	3. Chapter 3

Erik investigates; it’s one of his strengths. He leaves Peter to his class, and goes upstairs to peek into his room. He has a private one, since he’s rather older than the group. The hallway is empty; through the halfway open door all he can see is a mess of notebooks. “I’m not against this,” someone says—Jean, the girl with the power of cosmic force, and mental strength, his mind supplies automatically—and he whips around. 

But she doesn’t look angry that he’s snooping. “Go in, I’m coming too. That way I can stop you from prying if you go too far, but you can still learn something. Peter’s not exactly talkative when it comes to himself. The only thing he babbles about is the chord structure of the latest song he likes.“ Jean steps past him, and closes the door behind him with her mind.

She sits on the bed, and looks around. He does the same, somehow reluctant to really go through Peter’s things. For once, he’s spying for a good reason—a legal, legitimate one, almost. He wants to learn things from Peter alone, part of him feels, but another part is angry that this was denied to him. 

He never got to see him, to care for him. He feels wronged. No one can take what’s his from him, except that’s what always seems to happen. Erik hates his life, and contemplates that fact often. 

There’s the guitar in the corner, he realizes, beside dozens of notebooks and records. There are different sets of headphones [he didn’t know that were that many kinds, to be honest], and a record player. Along with several walkmans and wait, is one wall covered solely by stacked up tapes??!

“Yeah,” Jean agrees, looking at it with him. “He’s got a lot of music. He has tapes of bands I’ve never heard of—stuff from other countries, in other languages. It’s interesting.”

“You’re his friend?” Erik asks, rhetorically. He takes a long look at her, and she lets him. 

“I’m not very safe, I know,” she admits, and he can hear how it pains her to know it’s true. But he shakes his head. “You’re top shelf, super powerful. You can help protect him, if it comes to that.”

Jean half agrees. “I can in a way, but I can’t read his mind.” This surprises him. 

“It’s too fast,” he answers his own question, and she nods. He takes his leave of the room, having seen enough. Life must be obnoxious to Peter. Everything, and everyone so slow, so tepid. He’s alone, in his own world, while everyone else is a slave to time. He is beyond this temporal prison. 

He knows exactly what he has to do. Erik grabs a tape on the way out and heads down to Hank to have him speed up some tapes—both music and audiobooks. It interests him that Peter loves music, because he’s listening to it at normal speed, isn’t he? That’s the only thing that’s not hard to slow down for. It must react with a particular part of the brain. 

How much have they tried to study his unique abilities? He doesn’t know. Downstairs, in those underground rooms, there’s no one. Hank and Charles must have gone off somewhere else. Erik finds their files on everyone, in terms of health, but there’s also another set of files—of their limits. Their powers.

They’ve barely studied the group, he concludes. Peter’s file is practically blank. Erik resists throwing it to the ground in annoyance. Can he move at different speeds? Can he do anything subatomically, or go through solid things? How does his speed work with water, can he walk on it as he runs?

How long would it take him to run across the country? From Paris to the coast of Russia? He stops, putting the folder down. 

What if Peter doesn’t even care about this stuff, he thinks. But he knows what his real worry is, why he’s really upset. Do they even share any interests? The file says Peter is a Lutheran. And Erik knows he likes video games, not chess. Comics, not books. He wasn’t raised to appreciate the things he and Charles like. 

To be honest, Erik only likes certain types of music. It’s not like they can have that in common. He can’t play any songs on anything, and doesn’t care to try. Wait, ‘play’—he watches sports with Jean, doesn’t he, Erik realizes. 

They watch the matches together, in his room. That makes no sense, as the kids always have some game on the television almost every time he passes. Whether it be lacrosse, baseball, basketball or football, it’s on there. So why the privacy?

Are they speeding up the tapes? And why does he need Jean for it, is it the alteration of the strip on the VHS, or is she there for something else? He decides to ask her. 

He and Charles have often worked on their powers together, have practiced things. Charles once told him how hard it is to practice mental actions, exercises, but that the strength of his mind helped him bounce things off of him. Peter's mind must be a thousand times more impenetrable than his own, he thinks. Is Jean trying to control her cosmic power, instead of letting it rule her?

Charles has talked with him about how he feels it usually lays dormant, until it feels like coming out. That it's not always seemingly Jean's choice. They should find out, Erik thinks grimly. Before they find out too late.


	4. Chapter 4

Later in the day, he and Charles have lunch together. It’s something they do when he’s at home. While his friend looks a bit apprehensive about his mood, he’s actually mellow. 

[He’s been told it’s hard to tell; which is strange when you think about it, since can’t Charles read his mind -- and mood? Apparently not perfectly.]

A human would need to run at 100 kilometers an hour to walk on water successfully. Erik learns this while watching television with Peter and Scott. Apparently, Peter mainly likes to watch nature documentaries that just show endless landscapes, interspersed with some animals and plants. He doesn't get it, but he doesn't ask. He feels like he doesn't have the right, somehow, to just ask questions out of nowhere. 

But he's getting closer to feeling like he doesn't care, and going for it, despite his worry about being misconstrued. He feels intensely worried that Peter is going to recoil from him: it's only a matter of time. So many things are off limits--and oddly Peter asks him no questions, so he feels even more so as if he has to reciprocate in kind. 

The only thing he feels comfortable asking him to do is go to soccer matches. Charles is predictably obssesed with them and has them queued up to watch on the television all the time, so Erik asks him why don't they just go to some. 

"You're right," Charles says, surprised, and then considering it. "It'll be easy, with Peter. Having him with us changes everything. We can go anywhere, anytime. See what times are good for him, and I'll get a list of matches going on around the world. He and Jean go to Fiji all the time for some reason. Especially last month, hmm...."

Thankfully for Erik, he's too preoccupied with organizing the files on his desk to notice that he's just gaping at him. He hadn't thought of Peter at all. He just assumed Americans had random local games they could drive to. He can tell that Charles is talking worldwide. 

That is, England. Great. He'll get to hang out in the cold, damp weather, be on the lookout for anyone recognizing any of them, and try to not be too terrible with Peter, in the sense of awkwardness.


	5. Chapter 5

He didn't need to worry. Charles is literally unrecognizable, decked out in a ridiculous color scheme of gear. Unbelievably, he fits right in. Peter looks like a random youth, and the Jean-Scott pair are unmistakable American tourists. 

So they're all fine. Erik just can't stop worrying, though. He'd been a little calm, after the Apocalypse situation, but now he feels vaguely anxious about Peter. Not that he says anything to him, of course. He has no right to bother the boy. 

For someone who can go anywhere, he almost seems like something of a homebody to Erik. At least based on how often he notices him quietly existing in the background at the mansion, off in his room or his classroom. 

When he finally decides to ask Charles about him, he finds that he apparently knows nothing. Just the basics. So he turns to Jean, who admittedly, he should have asked first. She often has her pulse on things, due to her barely controlled mind reading, he assumes. 

But she does shrug. "Peter is complex," she says, "but his one constant is that he always is doing a ton of stuff every day. He reads constantly, and goes all over--the world, I mean--but he told me once that he has to study over and over to really remember a bunch of new information. It's easy to 'memorize' I guess, but then his mind wants something new, and doesn't keep the old easily."

Erik nods, ready to ask about how many languages he knows, or at least her best estimate, but she continues. "Like the other day, Ororo was teaching us a couple of words in Arabic, in Masri. She said she missed speaking to other people in it, so the three of us tried to learn a bunch and try to talk to her in it." Jean huffed a laugh. 

"We didn't realize that Peter could read a few books, very fast, and be able to actually talk in it. Well, as far as a book could teach you, so sounding like a formal robot. She couldn't believe it--but I know he has to read those books again when she asks him to talk with her in it. He doesn't know it by heart."

Down the hall, some kid calls to Jean, so she glances at him and walks away. She can see in his expression that he needs time to think about it, he knows. He's been told he has an 'epic frowny face', by someone in particular. 

Who then froze up, almost unwilling to joke with him. It kind of hurt, but Erik understood it was hard for Peter as well. They had been in the hall near the start of the long, mostly empty corridor that led to the music room, so he turned down it. Peter was usually down there anyway. 

When he arrived, though, he found the lights off and the place deserted. All except for a little piece of metal and plastic that caught his eye immediately--it was Peter's walkman. He put his headphones on, and clicked play.

He had to pull them off immediately. It was noise, almost like the sound of a high pitched signal, not music. 

Because the world was against him, and god hated him [he was almost 100% certain about it at this point], Peter walked in to catch him red handed. He raised his eyebrows at seeing what he held, but didn't say anything. 

"I wanted to hear modern music, I rarely try it," Erik said, trying to cover his tracks. He felt like he'd been gathering intelligence on his son, but it had been innocent, too. He'd never seen someone touch the boy's walkman. Hopefully it wasn't sacrosanct. 

Peter tilted his head a little to the side. ""It must sound weird to you. That tape's sped up, it's for me. Sometimes I get tired of time." He looked abashed suddenly, like he'd told a secret. 

Erik felt a well of sympathy spring up for him; it would be terrible to feel imprisoned by time itself. To be moving faster than everyone else. "Have you had Charles look for other runners? Or checked his files on known mutants?"

Peter looked surprised, but his lips thinned, pressed together. He went and closed the door of the classroom, and sat down in a chair beside a large, upright wooden harp. 

"There's a few," he finally admitted. "We know each other. A little. We mostly just wave to each other if we pass. Sometimes some of them leave messages... out there," he hedged, clearly unwilling to inform someone who was not a member of the group.

Erik forgot for a moment that it was probably wrong to press him. "How far have you tested your running? Do those others seem faster or slower?"

Peter shrugged, and Erik forgot himself and rolled his eyes. "We have to start doing research," he insisted.

He was leveled with a look. "I already got the gist," Peter told him, almost too quiet. "I've started not getting older." Erik stared at him; he'd thought them all totally uninterested in the implications of their powers.

"So has Jean," he continued. "Apparently I exist outside of time, like my soul or something is not 'living in this world's time'." He sounded like he was quoting someone, but who? Clearly Charles hadn't told him this. It would have been an ongoing, endlessly talked about issue, for one. 

At his lack of words, Peter kept going. "Jean says she thinks her body is 'restored over and over' by her cosmic bird spirit. It lives in space, she thinks. She isn't aging either."

Erik broke in. "Who knows this?" he demanded, suddenly worried about it. 

"Just Hank and us," Peter said mildly, as if it weren't extremely sensitive information. And mind blowing. 

So he would die before his own child for once, he thought. And his little boy would watch everything change, and die, and be renewed. "Jean says she thinks the bird made her soul live before, in the past, but she doesn't want to try to 'get' the memories--if it's even possible," Peter added. "She thinks I'm from somewhere else, like whatever the source of energy is in the universe. I'm just 'from' it, and will go back to it if I was blown up or whatever."

Erik took him in. He did look calm, but his eyes were unhappy. Resigned. It was a terrible thing to see on someone so young. 

"Do you feel it?" He couldn't stop himself from asking. 

"The energy place, you mean," Peter said, almost a statement. When he nodded, he agreed. "Yeah it's there. It's bigger than just here. I can feel it, like sense it, that it's out there. I haven't tried to get out there, though. I would have to go faster than I usually do."

Erik hesitated. He bit down on the words--you should be careful when you practice. But didn't he also think it was essential to practice, train, understand and cultivate your power? He did. 

He just didn't want to see him get hurt. 

"Charles says you and Jean travel a lot," he said nonsensically, immediately regretting the non sequitur. He just felt lost. What could they say, and what couldn't they?

At this, though, Peter brightened into something closer to his usual self. "Yeah, we go all over. She's working on moving faster, since she's just red fire speed, instead of normal person speed like me. She's getting better."

Erik's eyebrows shot up and almost fell off his face. That was indeed interesting--training in 'another' power. An unintended side route. Hmmmm....

Peter stood suddenly, and Erik looked up, surprised. It was still a strange feeling, to see him simply 'be' somewhere else instantaneously. It must take control not to do that constantly, he mused. "I was gonna go to Miami for some new tapes. Do you want anything?" the kid said.

Erik shook his head, and simultaneously, he was gone.

But when he got up, there was something on the table between him and the door--a different set of headphones, and another walkman, with a few tapes stacked up beside it. A note in terrible, hard to read handwriting lay beside it, under the tapes.

Embarrasingly, it took him almost five minutes to read, and all it said, he realized, was 'try these instead'. He spread out the tapes, and put one in. So not sped up, he thought. He was right.


	6. Chapter 6

When Jean's parents come one random summer day to visit her at the school, Scott goes into crisis mode. She is not prepared, and not happy about it. [They're not there yet, but apparently she knows their minds are coming towards the area.] He runs downstairs to get Peter.

Typically Jean would just talk to someone in their head, but she can't reach him. He asked her once if they'd practiced, but she said no. He didn't ask if that was more for her sake or Peter's. He is safe, inviolate, and he can't begrudge how they're friends--firstly, because Peter never seems to be into girls that way, or boys really, either, and secondly because his mind is one of the few that is silent to her. With Peter, she is more normal. 

She gets to playact for a moment, he thinks, assuming that's what they do. He's not entirely correct, but doesn't find out for a long time. 

Scott runs down the stairs, turns a corner, down the hall, and out into a larger section of the building. He rushes right into the Professor's office, only to find Peter, him, and Erik there already. 

They all look up at his dramatic entrance. Even Charles looks startled, which worries Scott--what were they talking about? It must have been something good enough, or bad enough to absorb him almost entirely.

"We have a problem," Scott gets out, and relays the story quickly. Peter looks like he gets it right away; there's recognition on his face, and determination. 

But Scott can't let him go yet. He feels guilty, making a big deal out of Jean's totally regular, non-mean, non-problem parents while Peter is calmly sitting right there. And he's the one who's going to take Jean away for as long as needed. And yeah, she does need to calm down. 

She's doing breathing exercises, but her eyes are colored red in the iris, just a little. Scott kind of likes how their eyes almost match, in theory.

He turns to Peter. "I feel wrong asking you to hang out with her because of this, you obviously, and she agrees too, have a greater claim to being super angry about your horrible family situation. She is reacting like I kinda thought you would; I thought she'd be chill." He stops, he'd never realized that until just now. "Why do you guys have the opposite reactions? It makes no sense."

Peter seems to consider this, and unfortunately out of the corner of his eye Scott can see both Erik and the Professor staring at him, not pleased. He doesn't have to look directly over there to confirm it.

Peter explains. "She's more of a cardinal, you know? In the spring. She pushes down on the branch to go up, and gets away from a tree. When she looks for other birds, her family of them, there's no one real there. There's something not in them, that's missing. The relation part is missing."

Scott is only too aware that Erik is literally right there, but can't help himself, he wants to hear even more of Peter's point of view on his personal situation. "What about you? he asks. 

Peter makes a minute shrug and says idly, "I might be more like a big circle, those round cheeses, that just spins down the hills forever, it's by itself." He seems totally unperturbed, of course, unlike the other three people in the room.

Peter as a wheel of cheese, rolling on forever. Scott can picture it. He does appear to be outside of normal life, unconcerned with anything typical. Peter lives in some other world, where you're never angry, never yell, and never care that the father that unknowingly abandoned your bottom barrel family is right there. Only he could pull that off.

He's so blasé that Scott's surprised Erik hasn't snapped under the strain of dealing with him. If he has, that is. 

Jean tells him things, but not everything. And he doesn't ask. He's loath to abuse her power, she can barely control it as it is.


	7. Chapter 7

Erik thought he was doing okay. He and Peter had spoken a few times, all very amicable. Of course Charles was all over him to practically tutor the boy, but he was used to his 'jump right in' mentality. 

To Charles, safety was not a priority. He was the type that enjoyed running headfirst toward an oncoming train, if it was the progressive thing to do. Erik was more cautious, a planner. 

... Well, he tried to be. He always tried to control his emotions, and not just react with his first instinct, but it didn't work all the time. 

He just kind of ignored Charles' counsel on this score. Peter might be the fastest man alive, but he was also wary, and hesitant, in his own way. He looked before he leapt, or ran, rather. 

Charles had unfortunately requested the two of them have meetings with him, which mainly consisted of him telling them [in a roundabout, vague way] to do things together. When that didn't work, he just assigned them 'community projects'. 

He had wondered for a moment if he should object, and tell Peter he didn't have to be forced to spend time with him if he didn't want to, but before he could, the boy said, "Of course, if my powers can help someone."

The look on Charles' face was priceless; he had clearly not had that kind of 'project' in mind. Erik was sure he'd meant something like 'plant extra flowers in the East garden by the pool'. Now he had to come up with something serious.

Then Charles said those terrible words. "I want to come up with a stash of unique Christmas presents from all over the world for all the children. You've always been good at organization, Erik," he said, and then turned to Peter. "And you're so creative and artistic. You'll be perfect at picking them out."

Peter looked shocked, but he didn't notice. He was too busy realizing what this meant. The spectre of Christmas had reminded him that his son was going to celebrate this holiday--and he had no idea what he was supposed to do, or get him. 

It was a nightmare. And oh, what if he got Erik a present? He'd have to react correctly. It was just too much. 

He and Charles had always celebrated Channukuh privately anyway; he'd just put the little candles in Charles' room, which they often shared. Neither of them slept well. What had begun as waking each other out of bad dreams had slowly turned into a more serious relationship.

They had rarely been physical, due to Erik himself, he thought. He was very hesitant to go all in, whether emotionally or verbally. Even with his late wife, he had made her wait a long time. He hadn't been comfortable at first with being so open with someone. In any way. 

And of course, it was harder with Charles, because he was always trying to change his mind. He never got 'into' his mind, of course, but the lack of privacy was hard to deal with. And he was visibly sad if Erik was dwelling on morose memories. He sometimes wanted to, and that was fine. 

Being with Charles had been so much work back then. Now it was off the table; not forever, just for a while. It was on a side table, he thought. He wanted to recoup after what had happened. It was strange to be making new routines with Charles when he should have been at home in Poland, being a normal person.

It had been so easy with his wife; nothing was easy with Charles. The transition period was still hard on him, and he knew he was often shying away from his friend. But he didn't care. He wasn't there yet. For now they were just weirdly intimate friends. 

And now, ugh, he had to get gifts for Charles as well. Their level of relationship demanded it--the many years they'd known each other, everything they'd been through. Their lasting bond despite anything that happened; even not seeing him for years didn't change anything.

He and the boy still only interacted at their now usual appointment, which had turned into a 'first thing in the morning' 'ruminating with tea' session in his classroom. He had turned up there one day, after Jean had hinted that Peter often tried tea from around the world, since he couldn't feel caffeine rushes [ie. he never bothered with coffee].

"Only coffee ice cream," Peter confirmed, "and bubble tea, you know? It's good."

Erik had paused, unsure of what that was, and unwilling to reveal that he didn't know. He turned the conversation onto different things, and asked the boy what he thought of different things. 

He often wanted to know the answers to many questions, like what was his favorite anything? His favorite book? [He asks that, and is told he likes Kerouac, "if you mean serious stuff."

Whatever that means. Erik has read Rushdie, The Name of the Rose [he and Charles kind of have their own private book club], Love in the Time of Cholera--

"And the Hitchiker's Galaxy Guide ones, too," Peter says, interrupting his thoughts. "Sometimes I like books about magic, like the Avalon book or the Dark Tower. I don't usually read heavy stuff," he concludes. He glances up at him almost like he's afraid to hear his reaction.

As if he cares about stuff like this. He cares about him being alive, and healthy, and not unhappy, in that order. These weird early conversations gave Erik a feeliing of buoyancy in his ocean of heaviness. Sometimes the past came down on him like bricks thrown from the roof, and it was difficult to get up. 

Though it turned out, if he missed their morning appointment [which was unspoken but still real] Peter showed up next to the bed, warning him that he was about to get the doctor guy, so did he want anything before then?

He manages to convince him to just let him rest, but Peter warily agrees while somehow making a chair appear beneath him. He takes his shoes off and puts his stocking feet up the side of the bed while Erik lays there [without so much as a by your leave, as Charles would say]. It's his own room; when he gets upset he often retreats to his own space, not Charles' lair.

It's the closest he's been to Peter for a bit, he thinks, having his ankle so close to him. Somehow he sleeps and when he wakes up, in the late evening, he finds his hand around one of Peter's ankles, and that the boy is asleep. He's never really gotten to stare at him before. He can't make himself release his leg at first. 

He sits with him every morning, but he still misses him. He longs to treat him like a child, but god that would be terrible. He'd feel like Erik was trying to replace the dead and resent him. He's not. He's just so lonely; like feeling hungry, but eating doesn't appeal. There's no way to make that feeling go away. 

He wants to smother him, and hug him, but that's obviously unacceptable. He thinks of him as a boy, but he's an adult. One who even lives alone, usually. How do you connect with someone so different than yourself, he thinks.

He's sure if he mentions it to Charles he'll get a suggestion of a book club.

Then he realizes that's partially right--he has no choice. He has to go to the bookstore in the town nearby, dressed incognito, and buy a self-help book on 'connecting with others'. He can't read the books near Charles, for obvious mind reading reasons, so he stays out in the forest at the town's edge. It's always deserted; people don't even take walks outside anymore, apparently.

Then one of the next times he goes to the bookstore to get more material, he sees a damning title, and he forces himself to read it. He's both eager and worried to see it fail. To be honest, he's also worried to see it work. He's afraid of change, and of having to feel Peter's vitrol [even though it's been hetetofore unseen]. The book is called 'Connecting with Your Adult Children: How to Reinvent a Meaningful Relationship'. 

He's so embarrassed by the title that he unconsciously isolates himself from Charles after he reads it. It does have some good ideas though.


	8. Chapter 8

Of course, the mansion is attacked again. It's frightening, but at least they have Erik on their side, Jean thinks. He is very scary when angry. She focuses on destroying the intruders' trucks with her cosmic fire; she's usually an offensive player, no defense. There are other people who will protect the children as their main objective. 

Peter's not home at the time; he usually leaves her a note when he's going to be gone for more than a few seconds [in her perspective, his view of time is a little different]. He's in Brazil, trying out some new songs he wrote at their parties and music scene.

Soon it's all over. She didn't even have time to try and read anyone's mind. Hopefully the Professor has that covered. Jean checks Scott's mind to make sure he's okay, and he is, he's already telling everyone it's over and there's nothing to worry about. She rushes down to check in the Professor. 

It's something she's been doing for a while, after Egypt. They both want to make sure they're watching her power and how she thinks it's 'doing'. The Professor finally understands that she was right--her power is something else, something beyond just her mortal shell. Hank constantly monitors her with scans and studies, in the hope they find something that will tell them how she's doing [whether she feels more calm, or more potentially out of control and riled up]. And there's Peter, too. 

They've been practicing with him trying to communicate with the 'bird'. Even it cannot read his mind, but she can feel it recognize him. It knows he's unique, and will live forever, like her. Her power will keep her body forever young and perfect; it can heal itself on every level. Since they've found through Hank's studies that Peter will not die either, they've focused on working together to keep her in check. 

It feels good to have all these checks and balances in place, honestly. Jean tries not to let herself feel consumed by fear. No one knows what will happen if she looses control and there's no enemy to focus on. In the arctic, she 'plays' with Peter, trying to get his baseball cap off of his head before he can move away. 

It turns out he's pretty fast, even in the opinion of a cosmic power from beyond the dawn of time. The bird's bemusement at Peter [he's not a threat, but the bird's never had friends] is kind of funny to sense. 

When she gets to the Professor, she just finds him arguing with Erik. Apparently he got so upset he just killed the attackers, and Charles wanted "at least one alive, so I could learn what he knows!"

Charles seems fine, but Erik's arm is marred with red; it looks minor, at least. And you never know with him, he could have physically fought because he just wanted to teach them a lesson, not because he had to.

Erik huffs and stomps off; Jean backs up, and walks the other way so the Professor can have some time to cool off. 

She can understand both points of view. And she has no leg to stand on to blame someone for not controlling their emotions. She calls Peter from his room, and sends a note message to his pager to tell him to come home. They have a code system they came up with, in case either were ever compromised.

Unbeknownst to her, Peter zips back as soon she pages him. He runs by her [she looks good], by Erik [he was on the way, okay?] and to Charles. He usually gives him special instructions in serious situations, stuff the non-fast people can't achieve quickly.

Wait, why was Erik's arm so red? He goes back upstairs just as he arrived in the Professor's office. His 'relative' is cleaning a long, gross red wound on his left forearm. He mentally thinks of him as just being family, instead of his biological designation. 

His actual family wasn't super great, so he doesn't want to lump Erik in with them, and then be disappointed later. He wants him to do whatever he wants, in terms of dealing with himself. If he wants to be all 'father-y', okay. He is technically in the clear; he's never done anything mean to Peter personally. 

And if he wants to be like 'not my problem', fine. Whatever. 

Peter's known he was his father for a long time, and he didn't do anything about it back then, either. It's a hard decision to make. He didn't think Erik was a 'calm, hang out at home with a family' type of person, to be honest. And then when he finds out he did have a family for a while there, he doesn't know what to think. 

He kind of blames himself--could he have had a perfect family all this time? A father who loved him? Then he wouldn't have had to be alone all the time. But it would have still been weird, he thinks. He waits for Erik to notice he's there.

Peter's good with what they have now, which is weird conversations where Erik quizes him on random topics. He's never regretted not staying in school more than right now. He finds himself reading books on history, on politics--just to know what he's actually asking him. 

Often, he has to say something off beat, that has little to do with the question, just because he doesn't know a ton about what happened in the Middle East during and after World War I, okay?!

He's worried that Erik is going to tell him the truth, which is that he never wanted a random kid who knows little and doesn't amount to much, but he never says anything like that, at least. Erik just listens intently, and Peter has the horrible feeling he's judging every word he says. 

He did listen to those tapes, though. Erik left them in his room when he had gone off once, with a note that just read 'interesting. liked #4.' It's stupid, but his first thought is that he likes number four too! He's excited about anything they have in common, which is little. 

It's almost as if they aren't related at all, which makes Peter glad that at least he has him, as different as he is. He's actually a quiet, shy guy, up close, when he's not trying to save all mutantkind from human destruction. 

And Peter likes how he treats the Professor. He's clearly with him in some sense of the word, and he always is found talking with him, or helping him. Some of the little children in the mansion don't know who Erik is, really, or his reputation and history, just that he and the Professor are tight--so they innocently bring him their toys to fix, and little forks if they realize one of the tines isn't perfectly straight. 

Erik fixes everything with great seriousness, and high fives them afterwards, which is funny, because it's only Peter that does that with them. He kind of likes that he started to do it too. 

Erik suddenly knows he's there, he can tell by the big eyes he gives him, how he whips his head towards him. Everyone greets Peter's arrivals with a shocked look, but he usually does deer in the light eyes instead. "What's with your arm? Is it okay, you should go to see the doctor," he tells him. His arm looks nasty. 

Erik steps too close to him. "Are you fine?" he demands sharply. He grabs him hard, and Peter is so startled he thinks he might be trying to fight him, or trying to stop him from running. Then he realizes this uncomfortable, crushing him with his body-ness is actually a hug. 

Europeans sure are different, he thinks. He pats his shoulder gently. "It's okay, man. I wasn't even here. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it."

Erik silently disengages himself from him eventually, but he looks upset. Peter runs through what he said again [as best he can remember it] and tries to figure out what he said wrong. ??? He doesn't know. 

Erik finally turns away from just staring at his shirt angrily to working on cleaning his arm again. Peter decides to go, fast, before he starts talking again and makes things worse. He goes upstairs, and sees Jean in her room, and so he says hi while she tells him what happened. 

Jean is up by herself [instead of helping other kids] because she's supposed to stay away from people at large during and after any 'big' incidents. It's better if she's not provoked in any way, shape or form, they all agree. Scott is the one who talks to everyone, who helps make sure everything is taken care of. He kind of tries to take care of her, Peter thinks. 

Peter doesn't tell her what happened with that guy, which is another phrase he uses to refer to Erik, but he knows she can tell he's upset. He doesn't even go back to his room and turn on some music at first. 

He just sits with Jean, asking her about what her classes are about so she has something to take her mind off of not being able to participate with the others. And also so he has something to listen to. He doesn't like feeling emotions very much, he prefers to distract himself from them. 

Jean spends a lot of time studying, away from people, so she's a great distraction; it's like NPR in one person. And he's the National Geographic Society magazine, he thinks, and smiles to himself, interrupting her discussion of what happened during the English Renaissance so he can tell her. The NGS and NPR, they could be code names. 

She's less enthusiastic about the idea, but it's hard to tell from her laughter. "I want something awesome. Like 'the red eagle'."

Peter shakes his head. "What are you, a Tom Clancy novel? Your's should be 'cassowary'." From her look he can tell that's not taught in school here; he only knows them because he's been in Australia loads of times. Just to see it. "They're giant birds like an ostritch but if you get near them, then they're super angry at you. Real dangerous."

Jean turns on her side towards him on the bed. "I like it," she says. Then she sits up, interested suddenly. "I want to see them; I--" She stops, but Peter knows what she was going to say, that she wants to see if she feels anything for them. If there's any kinship for her on this earth. 

He's more lucky than her, he reflects. At least he feels something with Erik, despite how weird that situation is. She doesn't 'feel' anything real in a family way for anyone, except maybe Scott.

So why doesn't he feel lucky? He sits in her room, eating smurf berry crunch cereal and tries not to think about it while she plays games on the new Nintendo he stole for her. 

Hey, it was from what looked like a mobster's apartment, okay? Nothing wrong with stealing from the not good.


	9. Chapter 9

Erik is not happy. It's not like this turn of events is surprising to him, but still. He's not a fan. His arm hurts, and he just realized he didn't even think to see if Peter was fine after the humans were disposed of. 

He literally forgot his own son. He knows there's the 'in his defense' line of thinking, that he barely's just met him at all, but that's no excuse. Peter could have been anywhere, and did he find out where afterwards? No. He was too busy defending his position to Charles.

[Usually he keeps tabs on the boy by asking Jean where he is; he doesn't ask Charles, it would only invite a conversation about the situation. He doesn't to get into it with him, especially since he feels like he'd be sensitive about it if anyone had the balls to actually say anything to him about it]. 

Something has to change. The fact that he didn't even think of him as existing in that moment, that all he thought of was violence alone upsets him. He gets sucked into this downward spiral mentality, this horrible mental space that's like a dark quicksand with no sky above you, and doesn't even notice that Peter is gone for the first few seconds. 

Realizing he's gone just adds on to his general shirtiness, as Charles says. He always uses weird British words at inppropriate times [that he can only grasp through context, it's usually easy to tell from his tone of voice]. Does Erik ever use his language to say incomprehensible things? No. 

No, he's polite. He finally finishes dealing with his arm, and sits heavily on the bed. Just staring at the wall, but somehow he doesn't seem to see anything, really. 

He finally gets his back up and calls for Jean in his mind. She answers him by picking up the phone--and so does he. They can talk over the closed line, as long as no one calls in or out. "Where is he," he says, ground out as a statement instead of a question.

"Around," she says, and nothing else, which means hmm... he's either nearby her or literally in the room, so she's talking vaguely. "In your room?" Erik asks.

"Yeah, but give me details," she says, in a more commanding tone, and he realizes the boy must have been angry about his weird reaction earlier. 

He tries not to sigh but does it anyway. He feels tired, and somehow heavy, as if he's wearing one of those lead x-ray coats. "I overreacted," he admits quietly. "I want to talk to him. Can you send him down?"

Immediately, he realizes that might been seen as too much of an order, especially to be delivered by another person, but all Jean says is, "Will it be good if I do?"

"It will," he says, feeling the weight of their agreement. She wants him to come back happy, when he goes back to the older children's wing. Erik knows he doesn't sleep much at all, and is always bopping in and out of the youths' rooms when they have nightmares. His speed allows him to try and soothe them, or wake them, without suffering any ill effects when they wake suddenly [and unconsciously lash out with their powers].

He hasn't even hung up when he notices that Peter is already there, standing by the door. He has his goggles on, which Erik doesn't understand. Does that mean he's going somewhere, or came from there? He decides not to comment on them. 

He doesn't know yet that they're actually just a comfort to him. 

Peter tilts his head and looks at him. "May I speak with you?" Erik asks; he tries to use formal talk with the boy to show that he respects him as an adult. Admittedly, it might not be working, as he can tell Peter looks confused at this often. 

The boy nods, so Erik hangs up the phone, and lays down on the bed. Peter comes over to his usual chair, like he hoped he would. "I was too emotional," he says, with no preamble. "It can be hard for me to be calm after being like that."

Peter just nods, kind of shrugging his explanation away. For someone so energetic, he sure doesn't talk a lot. Erik wants to ask if his version of 'normal' talking would be so fast he couldn't hear him, but puts it aside in his mind.

"I want you to tell me about those tapes you had me listen to," he says. "But first I want to say something, just as... good luck."

"Okay," Peter says, interested. Well, it's to no avail, Erik knows, as he puts his feet up on the side of the bed. Perfect. 

He puts his hand on his ankle, like he has before, and thankfully Peter says nothing. Sometimes that's really handy. He says:

יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְפָנֶיךָ יְ-יָ אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ וֵא-לֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ. שֶׁתּוֹלִיכֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם. וְתַצְעִידֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם. וְתַדְרִיכֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם. וְתִסְמְכֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם.

He continues from there, and then it's done. A safe journey for an eternal traveler isn't so unacceptable to someone in another existential group. It's better to tell the boy it's for luck than from a religion he doesn't believe in, and isn't a part of. It's too bad they cannot share this, Erik thinks regretfully. 

Eugh, that's all he has is regrets half the time. He hates re-realizing that. 

He finishes it, and pulls his hand off him. Erik doesn't really want to creep him out, he knows he has to tone it down. "Now, the tapes. Tell me why they're special, musically; explain it to me."

Peter kind of perks up, which is nice. Erik mentally congratulates himself. He listens to the intricacies of Pink Floyd, not hearing anything but how his voice sounds in general, and falls asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

So Christmas is still happening. It seems to slowly approach, this inexorable crawl towards disaster. Peter hasn't said anything about it, and neither has he.

Then he finds out that Peter doesn't even celebrate Christmas with everyone [that is, he's not home during it, at the mansion]. What should send a wave of relief over him does not--Peter apparently runs through people's houses all over the world, giving them random groceries and toys, that, get this, he actually pays for. [He leaves the money on the till].

Erik doesn't know where the time went. A few days ago it seemed like Thanksgiving! And now he's faced with Christmas Eve, staring down the barrel of it. At least his own holiday went okay. Charles gave him some books on chess, and some by Polish poets and novelists, some plain socks and some top shelf bottles. 

Erik gave him some hideous sweaters that he happily wears around the mansion. It's hilarious. Erik can barely keep himself from cackling every time he catches sight of him, and if they have to discuss something serious, he makes him take it off. Who could concentrate in the face of a ugly jumper?

There's no way he can get Peter a real present. Even the mind readers can't help him now. He is forced to consult Ororo, because both Jean and Scott are being annoyingly smug about him giving Charles the sweaters. He's one hundred percent sure she just read it from their minds and told her little boyfriend. 

He doesn't mind them knowing that he cares for Charles, but he does mind the knowing looks. And anyway, it turns out that Ororo has the perfect solution. 

According to her, Peter hasn't even read the comics pre-emptively pre-figuring him, almost based on him--the Flash. Erik gets him a whole set. Who knew, apparently there are a lot of these little volumes; he's never read them himself, what with not really having a childhood. [And Ororo knows that Jean has already gotten him a little golden ring with lightning emblazoned upon it; apparently it's from the books]. 

There has to be something from just him, though, so Erik finally decides to go with a top of the line camera, the one that has the faster shutter speed. Since he goes all around the world, maybe he'll enjoy taking a picture sometimes. 

He tries to think of something music related and fails. He can't pick out records for him, the boy has complicated taste. Buying him concert tickets isn't possible, because Peter just zips in and out of anywhere and anything when he chooses to. He needs no tickets, ever. 

He finally decides to get him a little candy menorah set, with candy candles, in an enormous wicker basket filled with candy. He opens dozens of boxes of Swiss Miss hot chocolate and puts the little packets en mass into the basket, so it kind of alternates between that and confections. He's often observed him drink it in the morning when they talk. It's their 'quality' time, as Charles cringe-ily puts it. 

This way he can show him he can embrace the fun parts of being a Jew if he wants, without actually having to have the most awkward and difficult conversation of all time. Although actually, it isn't like that anymore. It's okay now. He can talk to him easily, finally, and it feels more natural. 

Erik teaches languages at the school, because Charles has too much time on his hands, too much money, and likes to involve Erik in any way he can--probably just to see the shocked look on his face when he informs him he has a class to teach in one hour. 

Charles is like that. He loves messing with him. 

He ends up not having to see Peter at all on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, to his chagrin. His wrapped presents for the boy sit in his closet, looking lonely when he stares at them as he gets dressed. Charles has been out in the main downstairs rooms 'staying up' for Christmas with several children for fun. 

When he eventually returns from the frivolity of downstairs [well to be frank, yes, he was hiding in the kitchen the whole time, feeling sorry for himself and arranging food for kids who need special dietary consideration], and goes back up to his room, he finds it filled with stuff. Just all kinds of things--boxes wrapped in what looks like Sunday's newspaper comics, actually wrapped gifts, strange looking shapes wrapped in what looks like Israeli newspapers as the wrapping paper. 

By the end, after he opens everything, he realizes that Israeli newspaper things are from Peter. They have to be, if only be virtue of the fact that who the hell could find those newspapers? And they're only a day old, the date on them indicating that they were printed yesterday! Also, one of the gifts is an actual little oscypek [a wheel of smoked cheese imprinted with design], which he immediately is certain was literally just made in Poland. As in, it was put out to be sold a few days ago, it's that fresh. 

[Peter is also the worst at taping presents compared to everyone else. Erik almost needs a knife to open things up.]

There's also bułka, and they even smell right, with a crunchy crust, and soft sourdough interior; and makowiec. The reason he knows it's from Peter is because there's a little post-it note on a bag of pączki, that just says 'these are good! I like them'. 

He takes it off the bag and just holds it for a second. It seems stupid, part of his mind points out, but he likes it. He puts the note in his bedside drawer, with the earlier one about trying music. 

Many of the children also gave him things, which feels weird, but it's kind of nice at the same time. Apparently many have noticed he likes to drink tea from Europe--only loose leaf, thank you very much--and got him little American boxes of tea bags. It's silly, but it's kind of them. 

He's going to have to drink that garbage in front of them so they don't feel offended, he thinks, but smiles. It seems more like a privilege than a burden.


	11. Chapter 11

Of course, eventually time catches up to him. After the day after Christmas draws to a close, he finds himself stupidly loitering in Peter's empty classroom the next morning.

He sits there with the huge windows closed and looks at the snow. He finally makes himself get up and goes to help Charles with whatever project he's inevitably going to assign him to, when Peter bursts into the room, literally. 

The giant windows clatter open, and he turns in surprise, ready to take someone on, but it's just the boy. Snow is already blowing into the room, but Erik doesn't care. "I like those donuts, I didn't know what they were at first, but the poppy seed one was a shock," Peter tells him earnestly, and he smiles unconsciously.

It was a shock to Charles too, when he first tried it. "I like them as well," Erik says, and suddenly feels worried about Peter's reaction to his own presents. 

"Oh neat," the boy says, pleased, and takes off his parka and boots, and then closes the window. Suddenly, Erik can't stand it anymore. He all of a sudden wants to invite him to do things like Jewish holidays, if he wants to. They've never talked about anything serious, really. And Peter seems to hesitate in terms of getting deep with him, understandably. 

"Are you a Christian?" he blurts out, and Peter turns around in surprise from the windows. "I mean, that's fine if so, I was just doing some other things a few days ago with Charles that you could do too, if you had an interest. Different people have different things they're used to," Erik kept rambling on inanely, seemingly unable to stop himself. 

Stop, he commanded himself mentally: you can do it!! But he didn't have to. Peter cut him off. 

"You mean the candles pyramid thing you guys do together?" he asked. "That's cool, it's like how they wear a hat of candles in Sweden. I just saw one yesterday. I don't know if I'm Christian, I think you have to read the Bible for that. I'm not good at reading huge books, or, like, learning," he added, quieter. "But I like presents. I wish we could celebrate all the holidays from all over. That would be fun." 

Erik raises an eyebrow. "Like what?" he asks, despite himself, and pleased that he's so open to the pyramid candles, which Erik decides is a great nomiker. He's going to have to use it with Charles just to watch him react. 

"Oh like Holi," Peter says. "That's my favorite. But I like the throwing tomatoes festival in Spain; you have to be in the mood for tomatoes, though," he adds sagely. "So what's the candles about?" 

The question throws of Erik off track. He had expected that was the end he'd hear of it. He's fine with Peter merely being polite, or showing nominal respect. He doesn't even need there to be anything underneath superficial gestures: he feels grateful to even have that. 

So he explains the candles. "It's an old story, it's symbolic," he says. "Actually, I think it's in the Bible."

"So long," Peter says, shaking his head in a put-upon way, as if the Bible has it out for him. Erik agrees that long books can be obnoxious sometimes. 

"Indeed. The candles represent the Adonai helping people, or god, you know, in a miracle." Peter appears to absorb this, and considers it. He decides to add in a good selling point -- "There's also donuts, like the Polish ones, but people call them sufganiyot."

"Count me in, man. I'm up for anything with donuts. I don't wanna get in on the Prof's thing, though. Thinking about it's made me hungry, actually--" Suddenly, Peter's eating a sandwich, and sitting down in a chair to the left of him. Actually, he doesn't usualy zip in and out on him, Erik realizes. He doesn't know that he's one of the only ones who could boast of that. 

Erik turns and watches him eat it. He looks up, but only says, "Do you want one?"

He shakes his head in a knee jerk reaction. Peter shrugs. "You're missing out."

That's when the thought comes to him, that he should give Peter some presents. Isn't that what the holiday is about? "I got you something," Erik forces himself to say, despite being worried about his reaction [the one right now, verbally, or later emotionally, everything really]. 

Peter looks up, shocked, and stops eating. "Oh no, did Jean tell you?" he asks, concerned.

"About what?" But Peter just shakes his head. "It's just candy, not contraband," Erik offers, and the boy laughs. "Really?" he asks. 

Erik just kind of nods. "Thanks," he says, and hugs him quick [in real time, not in his super-speed], and vanishes. Erik kind of clapses his hands together and stands there for a little while, letting it sink in. Another successful interaction with him, he thinks, happy. He's getting good at this.


	12. Chapter 12

The next major fight they deal with is a little too intense for Erik's taste. At first it seems there's only the Sugar Man running around, but then they find out who he's working for. 

Stryfe. He'd escaped from an alternate reality, and had been put there by Apocalypse thousands of years ago--and he was blaming the citizens of earth for it. He also wanted to find out what Jean's power could really lead to, and Erik had a feeling he was hoping for the planet's destruction. After all, he could just hop back to another universe, apparently. 

Even Owen Reece [Erik refused to call him 'Mr. Molecule Man' even in his head, it was a terrible name] paused when he heard him mention Jean. Apparently, he hadn't been in on that part of the plan. "No," he screamed at his ally, "think of the possibilities, if I could replicate any one of her!"

Stryfe gave him a what the fuck look. Erik knew how he felt. "Any part of her," Reece corrected hastily, but Erik could tell he'd meant his first statement. That did not bode well. 

The only 'other' Jeans were in other doppelganger universes, but Reece didn't talk like that was a remote scientific possibility; he talked like he knew that was the truth. Like he'd been there.

The girl in question was being held down by Reece's force field while he attempted to either subdue or kill her. She was fighting back, but had been slammed into the ground and he feared she'd hit her head. 

Charles was focused on taking out Stryfe with his mind, and had a host of backup with him, so Erik tried to mess with Reece's body, dragging the iron in his hemoglobin and myoglobin out of his body.

Suffice it to say, he didn't like it. Reece fell, screaming hysterically as his blood exploded out of his body while he tried frantically to fix it using his power over molecular space.

"Jean, get up"! he commanded her, but she couldn't, and she couldn't even speak; something was clearly keeping her down. She was trying to free herself, but could not. Erik couldn't sense any metal in the area above her. 

"Watch out," Scott told him, and tried to laser his way through the clear barrier [through a side part, so he wouldn't hit her], but that didn't work. When he realized he'd have to rip the ground away from beneath her in an effort to free her, Peter appeared beside her, underneath the force field, or whatever it was. 

He kept disappearing and reappearing, and suddenly her power unfolded like firewood bursting into red hot flame. He watched Peter, confused. What was he doing? It seemed to hit the barrier and stop, and then start burning into something. Something all black.

"Jean," Scott began to yell, but something in Erik knew it was too late. She was gone with a deafening boom, and that force field had crystallized and shatted into pieces that flew everywhere. The pieces fell into a huge crater where she had been laying, which was apparently melting into lava--or just on fire. Erik wasn't sure what you'd call it in English.

Charles, carried by Hank, came up next to him, running. "What was that?! That noise--"

"Jean's power doubled back on itself, over and over," Erik said, cognizant of the fact that Charles preferred more information when he couldn't read his mind during an emergency.

Then he realized they were all shouting; their hearing must have been dampened by the blast. "Stryfe's retreated, he had a teleporter as backup," Charles told him, a bit distantly, as he and Hank stared into the crater on fire.

"Let's go back to the house," Hank said, and Erik stood there waiting while neither he nor Charles told the children to get on the plane. They kept staring. "Where'd she go?" Charles finally said, getting choked up. 

Erik shrugged. "I don't know, her power was somehow 'behind' the force field." He didn't want to say that she was probably dead. He doubted her mortal body could have taken that trauma. ... Although, in the past, it had always seemed like her fire-ness came 'out' of her body somehow. So, who knows, really. 

It was sad, yes, but you had to focus on the survivors. That was something he used to keep himself in the present, and it worked well for him. He turned to survey the little X-Men who'd come with them, and absently noted that Peter wasn't among them. 

This wasn't unusual. Peter often was off doing different things, some for pleasure and some to help people. He always came back by the time they were all on the aircraft--for some reason, he didn't care for planes, and hated waiting idly on them. 

"Children!" he boomed, tired of Charles' indecision--well, more like emotional freezing up-ness--"come here, we're leaving. Get on the plane." Jubilee nodded and raced forward, and the others followed her lead. 

He inclined his head to her in thanks, which she seemed pleased by. Her compliance with his order helped the other kids fall in line, something he was aware of. Groups of people often followed the example of a trusted leader, and she was it for many of the children. 

He turned back, only to see that the only people playing hooky were Charles, Hank and Scott. Erik didn't want to rush them, grief was a terrible thing, but he also didn't want the children exposed, out in the open. Or Charles, for that matter. 

Not that he wasn't upset at Jean's untimely end himself, but he had trained himself to focus on action instead of emotion during battles in enemy territory. [They were in America currently, but he thought of every fight as in hostile land]. He could think about it after he got everybody home safely. 

Then it was safe to think about feelings. And he wasn't one to talk--he often couldn't get up. Sometimes he'd think of something terrible and have to just lay on the floor in his room, wishing he could go get in a fistfight just to get some of the anger out. He didn't go down to the practice rooms during these moments because Charles didn't feel they were strong enough to take him. [Those times were the only seconds where he regretted how strong his powers were]. 

He motioned to Raven to turn on the plane, and he could tell by her look she agreed. They needed to get going. Hank showed up behind him, dragging Scott along by the one hand he was not using to carry Charles. Erik took his helmet off and offered to carry him, if he wanted.

"Do you want to sit up front?" he asked him, carefully taking him from Hank, as he then led a shell-shocked Scott to a seat and strapped him in. They were almost ready to go, and that's when he realized they couldn't leave.

They were missing someone, and that was unlike Peter. He always got on the plane when the engine started. Every time. Erik snapped his glance to Charles' face, who stared at him. "I can't find him," he whispered.

Erik just looked at him blankly. It was true, he realized. Jean was the one who had sent a mental text message to some pager he carried. But Charles could not find his mind, even with Cerebro's help. And it was Jean who had practiced sending him the messages over and over. 

And she was gone. 

Erik suddenly got a clue: Peter had been beside her somehow, repeatedly. "So he's dead," he said, with no emotion. Charles gripped the front of his shirt, well his fire resistant cape, to correct. "With her. In the lava."

He looked out at the lava blast. He had wasted so much time. And now his only family member was gone. Peter was such a sweet little boy, too, not like him at all. Charles had just told him last week that he was trying to study with sped up audiobooks to get a GED, and that he didn't want anyone to know. Peter had wanted to announce it to everyone with a big party after he passed the test in a few months. 

The boy's parties were legendary, what with him tailoring the music, food and drink selection [non-alcoholic, of course] to the people involved. The kids had loved that; he'd found soda pop from all around the world for them to try. 

He'd made him pleased a few times, he thought, idly thinking of it. He didn't really notice Charles, or anybody else. There was some noise, he could distantly tell, but that didn't matter. Then he passed out--Charles had touched his mind purposefully, but he didn't think it through, he then hit the floor before Hank could catch him. 

"You better help his mind," Scott said dully, from across the plane. They all looked over at him. He looked down at where the Professor lay sprawled on the floor, and caught his eye, metaphorically. "He's going to flip." Scott look back at the empty seat in front of him; where Jean usually sat, Charles noted with increasing horror. 

"It doesn't matter if I do," Scott continued, "I'm just me. He's got real power, and it's going to spin out of control, pronto. She told me all about it...." he drifted off, turning inward, remembering the many times Jean had indeed tried to explain how strange it felt to be literally burning up, but staying alive at the same time. 

How no amount of power, destruction or control was enough. For either part of her. 

"Put him in a seat, would you," Charles asked Hank quietly, as he buckled him in. He picked up Erik gently and strapped him in, and they took off. The ride home was pretty quiet.


	13. Chapter 13

When Peter fell onto the grass, Jean was already there, unconscious. "Well, that happened," he said to himself, fast. He looked around, for a moment content to just sit. He felt exhausted, something that rarely happened. 

And he had no food; yet, he almost felt so drained that... maybe food wasn't going to help him this time. He might have to wait, he thought with a shudder. Hopefully he'd be at 100% soon. Jean looked stone cold asleep in her strange cool to the touch coma that the bird put her in when she used more power than usual. 

She'd said she didn't know if it was a way for her to cool off, or just a problem with her neurons not being strong or fast enough to wishstand real power. 

The grass was super tall. A few feet away he could see weird sticks that looked like they had weird sideways reindeer drawings scrawled on them.

Or ships. It could be either, he was no art expert. 

It was cloudy and not quite chill out, and they lay in the tall grass for a while. They seemed to be in some place that was a little hilly, way off in the distance, but with few trees, like grasslands somewhere. 

Just like they had practiced, things had almost worked. Jean had been very excited about the possibility of using her power as pure energy to fuel Peter's power, which was kind of just his actual body--since to go as fast as he currently could, he was almost converting himself into pure energy. 

He could sense it then, that his body was indeed a mortal shell housing a dangerously electric spirit. Jean had wanted him to try and use his potential inertia, to somehow summon his power and use it like a weapon. 

Turns out he's not a good learner, to no one's surprise, he though dryly. He was like an endlessly compressed spring that was unleased when he ran, but he had secretly actually tried to move by weirdly tossing himself forward, like jumping, almost. 

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. He didn't want to be relient on his legs, what if someone broke them like last time? And he also practiced vibrating all the time; now he was able to get his foot out of being trapped like it had been back then. 

He had to make sure he'd be free, uncatchable, unhurtable. 

Jean suddenly said something garbled, and he rolled over to face her. "Hwawwh?" she said, but Peter sat up quickly, confused.

She had spoken as fast as he could, and had actually said, to his hearing only, "Huh, where are we, what happened?"

"I don't know," he said, answering in kind. It felt nice to talk fast for once. "I vibrated through the glass holding you down, and tried to shake you hard enough to move through time, or space; well, some alternate place-like."

"Did my power help?" she asked, interested. She focused on dragging herself up; it was unsuccessful. 

"Yeah, it was like a battery," he said, and for a second they were just lost in excitement--they'd tried this many times to no avail--finally, it had worked. Then reality set in.

"But where are we?" Jean murmured, and it was a statement, not a question.

They were lost.


	14. Chapter 14

He woke up in Charles' room, at 3 a.m. The man in question was laying beside him, soft on white linens. Erik propped himself on an elbow and watched him for a moment. He must have made him pass out, he thought. He wasn't the fall unconscious from shock type person; god, he was used to them by now. 

Well, that was it. That little boy was gone now. He definitely had to get out of here; it was going to be impossible to be around children for a while. He might as well do something useful.

Hmm... Before he'd been brainwashed, he'd planned on going into Siberia and breaking into the prisons there to rescue mutants who'd been jailed unfairly. The humans could go to hell, for all he cared. But he didn't like to think of mutants betrayed by their powers, captured and abused. And that area was famous for 'human' rights abuses against mutants. 

Charles wouldn't force him to stay, he knew, but he didn't want to even tempt him. He got up, wrote him a note, opened the window, and flew right out in his pajamas, much faster than he should have. He took out a few degenerates along the way, out in rural areas, while picking up a coat, some clothes and some cash. 

It was simple to fly to the other end of the country, just low to the ground, through empty forests. And once there, flying out on a private plane with cash instead of a passport was simple. All you had to know was where the lowlife congregated and deal with them. 

He looked forward to it. On the plane, he watched the water pass by. The ocean seemed so large, serene. He didn't think about that poor boy. Erik had a system, now--anytime he accidentally thought of, or was reminded of people he'd known, he threw himself into work. 

That way, it was impossible to think about it. He was then much too busy helping people, killing the powerful [power corrupts absolutely], and dealing with his surroundings. 

Of course, by this time Charles had probably already woken up--but he hadn't spoken to him with Cerebro. That meant he understood, and was letting him go off to get over it. Charles was like that, he thought you could somehow heal from grievous injury. He was sweet, but stupid.

No one ever really heals from anything. 

What he didn't know was that one of the prisons he was going to infiltrate and break people out of was on the edge of the За́падно-Сиби́рская равни́на [West Siberian Plain]. And that is the earth's largest unbroken lowland--it's the best place for an airstrip that needs forever to take off, metaphorically.

He'd barely gotten off the plane in Tokyo when he heard Jean shouting in his mind. The ramen bowl he was eating almost tipped over when he jerked in shock and put his hands over his ears. 

It was definitely her--seemingly, of course, because that was impossible; her mental telephone call was way louder than Charles', and it was crude power, little control. He tried to talk back to her, to 'think' at her, but she didn't seem to respond to it. [Charles could always respond if he was mentally speaking to him, it went both ways, as far as he understood it.] 

Well, hopefully the signal, or she, would just stay where she was. If there was anything even there. 

He knew he was lying to himself, trying to feel better about it all. That kept him going, the truth was he was pretty sure he'd finally just had a mental break was going to ride it out. 

So what if he chased nonsense ideas around? It wasn't like he didn't have the time for it. He was pretty sure was going to find some broken, technologically advanced radio signal tower at the end of this goose chase. 

It was probably reacting with his sensitivity for metal or something, or some type of reaction was happening with the signal and a part of his brain. He didn't care. It was something to do on the way to his prison break operation.

He'd never really talked in depth with her, but she had been the boy's close friend. If only he could have been closer with his friends, and him, too, but he refused to think about him. No.

Unfortunately, the signal described where it was as a type of nonsensical descriptive words that didn't pin anything down. 

But then she mentioned that it was flat in all directions, forever. That, he could do. All he had to manage was flying around, looking for her mind. She clearly couldn't hear him, but kept repeating the same things over and over. 

It was kind of despondent. He got on the next plane to Russia, and once there he could finally start working. He flew around, trying to find her. It took days, and he kept having to stop and sleep, but he kept going. 

At least he was going in the right direction, because he could feel her 'grip' or her mental voice seem more clear, like a local radio signal. It wasn't louder exactly, there was just less static. 

And then it died out. There was nothing, which was somehow worse than actually being psycho and hearing things that weren't there. At least he hadn't been alone when there'd been the voice to listen to. 

A week later he got to her; there was her body. What a hallucination, he thought, marveling at it. This was insane. There was no way that was her. 

It did look just like her, though, he thought. She was very dirty, and looked asleep; she had a very weak pulse. There was nothing else there. 

.... Okay, there was a body that was Peter's in image, but that was impossible too. He refused to acknowledge this was reality. He was probably projecting onto two random peasants who were lost and near death.

They both definitely looked it. He couldn't look at the Peter one, it was too upsetting. And anyway, he was proved right when he couldn't wake them up. Peter had always had a hard time sleeping, and Jean woke up constantly with problems, so it was case closed, he decided. 

He put her arms around his neck and tied them together with cloth so he could fly, and held the boy one. He stopped on the border of Russia, slept for a while with them beside him, and then paid an outrageous amount to transport two 'drunks', as he called them, illegally into Japan. He took them to private house that he bought on the spot in Hokkaido, on the coast, [Swiss bank accounts were so handy, as were ones in the Cayman Islands], and had a private doctor with nurses just come to the house.

The medical team was happy to come in daily, and to be paid under the table. And to not follow procedure. He just couldn't make himself give the two kids to a hospital yet, and anyway, what was the point. He could buy his nurses any equipment they needed, and in a cold, sterile hospital ruled by death, no one would care for them like he would. He spared no expense on them.

He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he did creepily hang around the boy. He sat by his bed and read to him. Not that it did any good. 

The doctor opined that they were in a coma due to exposure, starvation and cold. Erik allowed two nurses to stay round the clock, switching out with other ones at different times of the day, so at least the poor children would be taken care of constantly. They were someone's people, though he couldn't go so far as to ask the nurses to describe their faces. 

This was just like when he used to see women that he thought looked his mother, afterwards. He would rush up, grab their arm, twist them around desperately -- only to see a random, average woman. Not her. 

He'd finally forced himself to stop doing it. It was some terrible compulsion, so he made sure not to stare at either of these children. For weeks, they just lay there, unconscious, and he read random books to the boy. Sometimes he did it for the girl too, but mostly he had the nurse play music for her on a record player. 

That way, if either approach helped one of them out of their comatose state, they could try it on the other one. Slowly, he made himself look at the boy after a while. It was just to punish himself. He looked just like him. 

But how many times had he made that mistake before. He may be crazy, but he's not stupid. The real Peter would have come home, not been out dying halfway around the world. He was also considered to be impossible to 'knock out', due to his constant hyper-energy state of being. 

Even Charles had agreed on that. He kind of missed him in theory, but then again, this was way easier than dealing with his sadness for him, his kindness, his worry. This was just quiet. The only noise was the records playing in the girl's room, a very muted rumble when outside it. 

Finally, he decided to switch it up, and anyway--why not give the boy some music, in honor of his son's love for it. It seemed obvious after the fact to do it, but he'd been unwillingly drawn to the boy. He wanted it to be more intimate, to read him all the things he wished he could have in some alternate universe where he got to actually have him as his actual kid, not just a distant heir. 

It had killed him slowly, he finally acknowledged to himself, that Peter had known for so long and never told him. He could have found him, told him he was his son, and he didn't, over and over. To his face, even, only saying he's there for 'family'. 

What irony. Erik had thought of it week after week when he was alive. It had been like an endless knife, stabbing him slowly. He deliberately kept himself from him. 

So this was what Charles must have felt like, he'd thought--this terrible reality, of knowing your closest, and only family members didn't care about you at all. They just ignored you, it was like Peter hadn't cared if he was even alive. 

Had he been going to keep it a secret forever? The Japanese nurses he'd hired were very good at pretending they didn't notice how he had hysterical crying jags sometimes. 

Well, he did compensate them incredibly well, he reasoned. They had come highly recommended. Months and months passed, and seasons went on. Oddly, there was a lot to do with coma patients, like physical therapy, cutting their nails, etc. He made sure to order extravagant presents for the medical team for holidays to show his appreciation. 

Erik felt like he'd been left behind, distantly observing the world turn from his remote house. His two silent patients were weirdly good company, in his opinion. He finally became able to hold the boy's hand, and talk to him more naturally. 

It was during a terrible thunderstorm that Erik got worried. He liked the power to stay on, and yes had generators just in case, but still. He wanted to make sure they could sleep peacefully forever, and he also wanted all the medical monitors beeping away quietly so he could rest assured that they were still alive. 

Being by the coast was a negative, he noted, watching the rain lash against the windows. A branch cracked the glass through, and he jumped up to pull the boy's bed away from the window. Glass shards spilled over where his legs were covered by a blanket. 

Before he could get there, or jerk the metal of the bed towards him [which he didn't want to have to do, since he had an IV in, a line monitoring his heart, etc.], lightning cracked through the sky, and he jerked awake. Erik stared at him, shocked. 

He was so discombobulated to see his coma friend wake up, he just stood there for a second, speechless. Finally he grabbed a cup of water and had him sip it. He stared at him as he drank it, and both of them got rained on through the broken window. 

Peter looked up at him, and he just knew all of a sudden that his fantasy was real. Indeed, he had been close in recent days to calling Charles, and having him try to mentally reach out to the kids, but could he even do that? If he could 'let' coma patients wake up, Erik assumed he'd be doing it all the time. 

Charles was nothing if not a dogged do-gooder. And even if he was imagining them being some other people who were gone, he didn't care anymore. He was willing to just pretend he come from the dead. "I fell through space again? To here?" Peter whispered. "Where's Jean?" He raised a swaying arm towards him clumsily, and Erik took it between his. 

He held the cup in the other hand in case he wanted more. "Tell me something to show me it's you," he said quietly. 

Peter raised an eyebrow, but metaphorically seemed to shrug. "You like listening to Schubert with the Professor when you guys play chess. You like hugging, even just a foot. You guys listen to Parsifal when the Prof's upset about something. Jean's always said you're married to him, but you know, whatever. You do what you want. You should be happy," he said earnestly, and Erik blinked a little prickly at the idea of Peter so openly accepting any of his possible life choices. Well, that was definitely the real Peter, he let himself accept. It made him tear up a little; the shock kept him from really reacting. That would come later. 

He did have a penchant for kind of half-hugging Peter [and actually hugging him]. As well as reaching out a hand when he was ill with the blues in bed and grabbing an ankle. Or yes, his foot. 

For a second he just forgot himself, and talked to him. "Charles is much too good for me," he said, honestly. 

Peter gave him a look. "You're cool. You defend people, and take a stand. There are mutant kids out there, alone, and being hurt, and they know you're out there, taking out humans who hurt people like them. You're who they hope comes rescue them."

Erik had a case of the speechless for a moment. "How long was I out?" Peter continued. "Why is there a window in the infirmary? Are we upstairs?"

Erik suddenly realized he was unconsciously smoothing over his hand, in repetition. He couldn't make himself stop. "We're not at home," he explained. "I wasn't sure... if everything was going well, so I had you recuperate here. This is Japan," he hastened to add. "Jean is in the other room. I don't think she's awake yet. "

He carefully pulled Peter's bed a little away from the window, with all the little monitors that were fixed in him as well, but at least the rain had slacked off so his blanket wasn't getting wet. 

He made himself refrain from asking if he'd heard his monologues while unconscious. "I felt electricity when I woke up," Peter said, in a questioning tone. "Did you use those heart starting paddles on me?"

He shook his head. "There was lightning. Are you really alive?" he finished, in a tone very unbecoming of an older man. 

Peter smiled at him. "No one can kill me. I'll just be back. Energy is impossible to destroy."

He knew he was trying to reassure him out of kindness, but Erik didn't care. He was so overwhelmed, all at once, that he forgot to even call the nurse to check him out. He just hung out there, weirdly, and finally found himself woken up by the nurse.

He'd fallen asleep half-hunched over Peter's bed. He felt like Peter'd kept his hand on his shoulder, but it was mostly muscle memory, really. He un-cricked his neck gently, while wincing, and turned around to see Peter drinking what looked like miso soup from a straw in a big cup. The nurse had already given him crutches. 

Miyumi was amazing, he thought, for the millionth time. "She says Jean's still asleep?" he said, pausing with his drink.

He nodded. "Let's bring her to Charles," he said. "If anyone can help her, it's him."

Peter looked almost guilty. "I don't know if she has a 'thing' she responds to, like how I have energy. Well, other than being angry. Can I see her?"

"Of course," he said, and rose to help him to her room next door. They sat with Jean for a while, and Erik got out a phone and called the mansion--well, the extension to Charles' bedroom, where he usually was at this time of day, taking into account the time difference. 

"I'm going home," he informed him, when Charles announced himself absently. 

"Erik?" he began, but this was too important to let him talk over. "I have some people with me, you'll need to look at them. One... red chicken and one comic book person."

Erik had a policy of never saying something dangerous over an unsecured line, or an international one, for that matter. Unfortunately, he hadn't given himself adequate time to think of what to call either of the children. Peter cracked up in the background as Erik resolutely ignored him. 

"We'll be there in a few days, the flights will take some time," he explained. 

Charles only said, "I'll be waiting." No questions, no demands, no anything. This was Erik's favorite version of him. The one that just trusted that Erik was trying his best and was willing to help in any way he could, when he was needed. 

They said goodbye, and he looked at Peter. "We can say I'm not your father, you know, only Charles knows for sure -- you must hate knowing it and that I know," Erik said, and froze. Where had that come from?! What the fuck... He'd just said it almost unconsciously, as a matter of fact. 

Peter looked quite comically surprised. "That's not true," he said, as defiant as he'd ever been, really. "I just didn't want to be another disappointment to anyone."

"Listen, child," Erik said, kind of galvanized by how kind Peter was, no matter what the situation. "I only want my family. Even more then mutants being safe and ruling the world," and the boy laughed a little. "I'm very boring," he added, which was true. 

He had been quite afraid of Peter's eventual ennui while dealing with him, although that hadn't happend yet, admittedly. Peter smiled a little. "Then we're two of a kind," he offered hesitantly. 

Erik got up and hugged him. "We have to start packing up," he said, still with a hold on him. "We'll need to board some flights." He finally let Peter go. He didn't look him in the eye, but if he had, he would have seen that he didn't seem to mind.

"Wait," Peter said, worried, "where are my goggles??" Typical, he thought happily. Ready to jump back into the speed running land as soon as possible.


	15. Chapter 15

Peter had made him get sushi before they left [he's not a fan, Peter however eats tray upon tray of the stuff]. He doesn't know what he sees in it. The boy'd also picked out a bunch of presents for Jean, for when she woke up, which got Erik a little misty eyed, metaphorically, but he tried to smother it.

The plane ride is interminable, mostly because he has to talk to Peter during it. He doesn't want to risk carrying Jean while running across the ocean, and Erik agrees. They lay her down in a 'bed' in first class, and buckle her in, just for safety. At first he talks to him with difficulty, but it gets easier as the hours pass. 

He tries to get to the bottom of what his power combined with Jean's achieved, to send them through space and matter, but Peter doesn't seem to know. He almost seems uninterested in the topic, to Erik's chagrin. 

When they get home, Charles lowkey punishes him. He doesn't mind. He gets a shock once they find out what really happened. 

Of course Peter told him nothing useful; Jean details how their powers combined, in a sense -- what with Peter using her energy, with her consent. That allowed him to vibrate at the same frequency or something as the actual ground beneath them, and the core of the earth, and Erik stops listening at some point. He's too hung up on the fact that Jean just carelessly mentioned how they lay there, unable to get up, until she fell into a sort of sleep-coma and he watched. 

Peter just lay there, starving, but awake, without even her to talk to. At his look of horror, she rushed to reassure him. "Oh, Erik, I told him I was going to. I had to go back to the white room, to recuperate. That way I would get my strength back quicker. He understood."

How did Peter never mention this to him? God, that plane ride took forever, and he just happened not to tell him?! Erik finds his reticence very annoying. Okay, more like hurtful. Why can't he just tell him the important stuff? First that he's family, it just goes on and on. 

It's like he's this random outsider, not part of the family--and apparently Jean is part of it. He's both displeased and annoyed to be in the position of having to resent a child. [Though he does like Jean. She's very focused; sharp, with edges.]

"What's the white room?" Erik asks her, as she and Charles discuss how they can work on her ability to psychically 'call' for help despite being almost zombie-like with no energy. 

They both turn to him. "It's where everything's from," Jean explains. "Like a starting point, and an ending point. Peter calls it the everything cauldron."

She pauses, frowning, but decides to continue. "I spoke with you while I was there," she admits, looking at Erik furtively. 

He stares back. "Is that what I heard? In my mind..." Charles is giving him a 'I'm going to kill you for not calling me' look, but whatever. 

[He gives him that look a lot.]

Jean shakes her head. "That was what I set up my earth power to do, but that's like an answering machine. I was really talking to you before you were born, the part of your soul that is waiting for you in that hot room. It's the crucible, the universe's only one."

Erik leans back in his chair. "What did I say?"

Charles of course wants to go there immediately; thankfully, Jean has no such illusions that Charles is some perfect, all capable person. Jean's got a cosmic creator/destroyer force on her side. Charles is just a man. 

"You were young looking, but you talked as if you knew everything about your life," Jean finally tried to explain, struggling to find the words. "I asked you what you could tell me, or teach me," at this Erik raises his eyebrows. He's pretty sure all the kids think he's a menace. "But you just said you were happy you accomplished so much. You said you 'couldn't wait to for you to get there'."

Jean gives him a look that implies she doesn't know what the fuck future-and-child him thinks he's done or is going to accomplish, and he feels her. He's got no idea. He shrugs in her general direction, and she subsides at his agreement with her confusion. 

"I looked for Peter," she says, quieter, "but he wasn't there." Erik narrows his eyes, and even Charles stops trying to interject. "I didn't think he would be, but I hoped so. I think he must be in the energy around the room, that I know surrounds it. I'm inside, though. There's no way to 'go' outside it, that would be like Scott magically throwing himself into space; you can't do it."

"Is it finite?" Charles asks. 

"The souls?" Erik says, surprised, but Jean is already agreeing with him. "I think it is finite. In it's own way, though. I don't think--"

"Did you see yourself there?" Charles asks. They're interrupted by the arrival of Peter. He's suddenly there, leaning against Charles' desk. "Hi," he says, pretty nonchalantly for someone eating a bowl of ice cream disturbingly quickly.

He looks at Jean. "There's a guy upstairs who says he's Scott's son from the future; he's talking to him right now. He seems okay."

Erik has no doubt that okay encompasses both his potential of doing violence and his general goodness. 

"Like, my son?" Jean says, shocked, but no--Peter shakes his head. "Some other lady's."

Erik has never been afraid of Jean until this moment. The ring of iris in her eyes turns bright red instantaneously, and Erik has an autonomous nervous system chill flood his body in fear. His unconscious mind knows what's up. [He's never been let down by relying on his instincts]. 

"Why don't we go shopping, like overseas?" Peter suggests into the awkward silence. 

Jean grumpily shakes her head in a kind of nod, so Peter glances at him, and then they're both gone. Erik looks at Charles. "I want to talk to this future person," he says thoughtfully, and Erik nods, levitating his chair for him so they can get there faster. 

Scott has never looked more relieved to see them. 

Erik doesn't begrudge Jean's 'golden ticket out of here at any moment', ie. her friendship with Peter, but in a sense it means she can run away from her problems, he thinks. And so can Peter himself. He never has to stay somewhere; never has to get hurt with no escape. He runs to stay free and unharmed, in a way. 

It's just too bad he's always seeming to run away from people in general, instead of toward them, any of them at all.


	16. Chapter 16

Erik hangs about the mansion, not doing much of anything, for a while. Crises pass into the distance, and it turns into the summer. Charles doesn't make anyone learn anything during those months: they are exclusively pool parties, a drink called Kool-Aid [he doesn't like it], particular American foods that Erik has only had a few times [hotdogs, oreos, and other things]. 

Personally, Erik thinks Charles is creating the perfect childhood he never had; the one he wanted. He's only ever really mentioned how lonely he was, but it sounds like it wasn't a very happy time for him. Erik kind of likes to see the kids play badminton, tennis, tag and other such games. 

For the most part, he hasn't left his room in a while, though. He's just tired. Charles is thankfully too distracted by the children's myriad problems to say anything about it. 

Unfortunately for him, Peter notices. 

On the ninth day of laying peacefully in his room with the air conditioner on, which he doesn't usually like [but he's gotten used to it, and it feels pleasantly numbing in the extreme], Peter rolls in. "Hey," he says, casually appearing beside the bed. 

Erik kind of turns his head a bit and looks at him. It feels like a greeting. Peter is dressed in his usual getup of band t-shirts and shorts. For some reason he has his goggles on his head, and sunglasses as well; both are pushed back into his hair. It looks funny, but Erik feels amused inside. It would take too much energy to smile at it.

"I got this problem," Peter says, staring across the room at the wall, and Erik frowns unconsciously. He's not the type of boy to have problems, much less mention them. He's a DIY, silent type. Jean's usually had to tell Erik anything of an unpleasant nature that he's had to deal with, because he doesn't speak of such things. 

He's only insouciance, lightness and carefree levity. Erik kind of likes that. It's like they're opposites. He's on the bottom of the ocean, in the dark, and Peter is jogging through the clouds with a walkman on. 

Peter continues. "Jean told some of the kids I'd teach them advanced French so we can go to France-ish Disneyworld on a little trip, but the whole outline she made is reading books and stuff, but I only memorize how to speak a language, not how to understand some older form of it--" 

"No Laclos," Erik says, surprising himself. He sounds like a rusty tractor engine. 

Peter looks surprised, which he realizes with a start is warrented. Every time he's come up to visit him in his little cold cocoon, Erik hasn't said anything. He never really thought about it, and Peter never acted like it was weird or said anything; now he sees how odd it is. 

What father material he is, he thinks. Always drowning in a black morass of death and silence. It's kind of insane to think that someone as happy and fun as Peter is his kid. 

"Well," Peter resumes, but Erik will be damned if he lets children choose which writers of the French Englightenment [or afterwards.... or beforehand] to read. No offense to them, of course, but they are too young to understand the period, the people and the import of the works written then. 

"And no Balzac," Erik says, cutting him off again. He sits up, which is a little disorienting, and Peter makes him drink a glass of water, a glass that had just materialized on his side table.

As he gets up, with Peter holding his arm for some reason [not that he's going to act like it's a problem, he likes to be rather smothering physically, and he can admit it privately], he catches a terrible glimpse of himself in the mirror. 

He can hardly go downstairs looking like a vagabond and talk about the 18th century. Especially since the kids probably know he's Peter's father. It would look bad. 

"I'll clean up first and come down, we can plan it out," Erik says, remembering himself. Peter is still holding his arm for seemingly no reason. He can already imagine them writing out plans in his little music classroom at the far end of the corridor. 

"Cool. I'll get you a plate in the mean time. And get the books out. Etc." With that, Peter is gone. 

Erik washes his hair, finding the sudden silence and aloneness suddenly odd. Strange, how the mind works. When he comes out, there's a plate of sandwiches on the side table by the bed. They are beyond strange--after a tiny bite off of one, he just starts opening them up to see what's in them. 

One is cucumber and mayonnaise and potato chips, another is ham and cornbread slices, another is crab salad and sauteed onion. It's.... unique, if he has to find the word. 

He tries to force himself to eat at least one and a half, so as not to offend Peter. It's repulsive, but he powers through. After he dresses, and shaves, and cuts his hair a tiny bit until he realizes he must be taking 'forever' in Peter's version of time, he goes down to the music room and finds him there with loads of books. 

There's everything: Chateaubriand to Urfé. They sort through it slowly, and Erik actually enjoys himself. And then Charles comes in the room; one look at Erik has his face a picture of shock. 

He looks almost hurt, but it's just a flash. Erik's very good at reading people. Charles makes his excuses and hustles off, but Erik decides to confront him later that evening. Well, talk to him is what he means by confront. 

In the old days Charles would have made it his business to badger him, to demand answers. When did that change? Aren't they, as Peter says, 'a thing'? So why the reticence? 

Erik plans to find out, right after he dissaudes Peter from trying to include Marivaux. The boy's clearly had no education. He has to make sure they include Claude P. J. de Crébillon, the fils.

**Author's Note:**

> **FYI I take commissions, just message me : )


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